December 20, 2013

The Morning Wrap

Legalized: New Mexico became the 17th state to allow same-sex marriage. The New Mexico Supreme Court unanimously concluded the equal-protection clause of the state constitution guarantees marriage rights for gay couples. Read the ruling here.

Shelved: "Five years after Wall Street set off a worldwide economic panic, the S.E.C.’s legal deadline for filing crisis-era cases is expiring," The New York Times reports. The Times examines enforcement decisions--and internal disharmony--at the agency. The tension at the agency, according to the report, "raises questions about whether the agency, even while winning some big cases, could have done more after the crisis to hold Wall Street accountable."

Disclosed: A UCLA law professor has won a partial victory in his quest to obtain State Bar data on the racial makeup of bar exam test takers," The Recorder reports. The California Supreme Court said the public has a legitimate interest in the data. Coverage here in the Los Angeles Times.

Censured: The National Law Journal reports: "The American Bar Association has censured a second law school in the span of a month for violating its accreditation rules. The University of Kansas School of Law must pay a $50,000 fine for admitting two foreign attorneys into a new LL.M. program that the ABA had not approved."

Revealed: Verizon next year will begin to disclose law-enforcement demands for customer data, The Wall Street Journal reports. The company said the reports will be updated semiannually. Verizon general counsel Randal Milch's statement is here.

Heated: A federal trial judge in Baton Rouge said excessive heat on Louisiana's death row constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, The Times Picayune reports. The judge ordered the state to come up with a plan to keep temperature at or below 88 degrees. Read the 102-page opinion here.

Filmed: Maureen O'Connor, chief justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio, has this op-ed today in the Los Angeles Times in support of cameras in the U.S. Supreme Court. "In recent polls, public confidence in the Supreme Court is near an all-time low," O'Connor writes. "This decline will continue until the Supreme Court operates less like an ancient Greek soothsayer and more like the coequal branch of modern government that it is."